Book Clubs Column by Julie Hale

Roiphe's latest novel initially appeared, Charles Dickens-fashion, as a serial in the New York Jewish newspaper The Forward. In short, tightly connected chapters, she tells the suspenseful story of Mel Rosenberg, the mayor of an unnamed metropolis, who is coping with a multitude of problems, including a malfunctioning welfare system and an insufficient city budget. Racial conflicts also dog...

Reflections on the main men of fiction

One ardent Rabbit fan is novelist and critic Anne Roiphe, who offers her own idiosyncratic take on Updike's most famous character and six other male literary figures in For Rabbit, With Love and Squalor: An American Read. Hemingway's Robert Jordan, Philip Roth's Nathan Zuckerman, Fitzgerald's Dick Diver at first glance these might seem unlikely heroes for an avowed feminist...